This article offers a comparative analysis of the educational model implemented at the Lisbon Polytechnic School, an institution created in 1837, after the Portuguese Liberal Revolution (1820), and those developed at the higher military academies of the eighteenth century. It argues that, despite serving a substantially different political regime, the creation of the nineteenth-century Portuguese polytechnic system depended extensively upon a tradition of military higher technical education originated in the late "ancient regime". In effect, a detailed analysis of the educational aims of the Lisbon Polytechnic, its curricular structure, reference knowledge system and pedagogical methods, demonstrates that the Lisbon Polytechnic pedagogical model was clearly inspired by earlier military technical training institutions such as the Royal Navy Academy and, particularly, the Royal Military Academy of Rio de Janeiro, in the Portuguese colony of Brazil. (Contains 1 table and 81 footnotes.)